The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing | AKSTUDIOS

Hi and a big welcome to our Fundamentals of Digital Marketing.  The way brands get discovered has changed massively in recent years, with a large majority of new customers now coming from the web.  This makes digital marketing skills an absolute MUST, if you want to build and sustain a successful brand going forward.

Digital Marketing skills are not optional anymore and you need to know what to do in order to avoid wasting precious time, effort, and money.

Now is the time to upskill, grow your reach, and build momentum.  If you take time now to put in some effort, you’ll enjoy huge rewards later, as the world makes the shift into a mostly digital economy.

 In this crash course, we’ll be covering the basics of Digital Marketing, so you get a complete overview of what you must do to promote successfully online.  These are the core skills you MUST master, if you want to thrive in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

We’ll be looking at some of the MOST CRUCIAL areas, including Website Creation, Video Marketing, Email marketing, Facebook Ads, SEO, Local SEO, Copywriting, Podcasting, Email Marketing, Instagram Ads, and YouTube, so you can jump in quickly and set yourself up for success.

We’ll also be covering the major platforms your business NEEDS to be on if you want to reach people and get new customers, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.

All these areas will be covered in much more depth in later videos, but this specially created introductory primer is designed to introduce you to the basics.  Once you’ve watched this video, you’ll know the essential steps you need to take NOW to position your brand for success in today’s digitally focused world. 

This is the essential knowledge you will need to know if you want to succeed as a Digital Marketer.

Copywriting

Copywriting is a crucial skill in today’s content hungry economy.  Information has never been more valuable and the huge surge in demand for digital based brands makes online content a valuable commodity.

Copywriting skills are needed in almost every area of marketing.  Even if you produce mostly video content, you still need an engaging description that tells potential viewers what your clip is all about.  Copywriting can boost your search engine results, help you build trust with your followers, and can convert your subscribers into active buyers.

There are some absolute must dos you should follow if you want to be a successful copywriter with the power to persuade.  Copywriting is an art and is so much more than just slamming down words on a page. 

Be original

Above all, don’t be afraid to be unique, as this will make your content stand out.  Don’t aim to just copy what other marketers are doing, see what works then add your own flair to create content readers can’t get anywhere else.

Name it.

Your header is vital when it comes to getting readers to click through to your content, and a successful header needs to be brief but impactive enough to immediately capture attention.  Don’t be afraid to be bold and emotive, and always remember to use your header to tell people what your article or ad is about.  Use numbers to add extra interest and to make your headers crystal clear.   10 Marketing Tips to Super boost Sales, sounds exciting and direct, whereas Great Ways to Make More sales, sounds boring and a bit vague.

Add value.

Are you giving your audience a value-added experience?  Your content should be telling readers something new, giving them useful information, or presenting them with an answer to a problem they have.

Tailor your content to suit your target audience.

You might be creating world-class content but its no good if your readers aren’t interested in the subjects you’re covering.  Take the time to do proper market research before you create a content plan, so you can write copy that caters to your audience’s specific needs and desires.

Persuade don’t push.

No one likes to be told what to do, and if your readers feel you’re forcing their hand, they’re likely to walk away.  Instead, gently persuade by dangling a tempting carrot right in front of their noses.  You can do this by framing your product as the ideal solution to a problem they have, by highlighting the exclusivity of your service, gaining their trust, or showcasing the popularity of your brand.

Be brief.

Brevity is crucial when it comes to copywriting, even when you’re creating longform content. People tend to skim, particularly online, so it’s important to keep their interest.  Think of tabloid newspapers and how their journalists can make news stories interesting and immediately digestible.  Don’t use a long word where a shorter one will do, or waffle on endlessly when you could cut down what you’re saying to just a sentence.

Use variety in your copy. 

Switch between shorter and longer sentences, add bullet points and sub-headers to break up blocks of text, and provoke interest by asking questions.  Compliment text with visual media like pictures or video where possible, to add more colour and depth to your copy.

Get emotional.

You might think that including a ton of facts or bar charts makes you look more of a pro but in fact it can even be a turn off.  People buy people, not products, and they connect with emotion, so don’t shy away from using emotive words with impact to capture the attention of your audience.  Be human, not a robot, so include a character in your copy, whether you’re writing from the point of view of your customers or sharing a powerful life-changing experience you had yourself.

Hit those pain points.

Everyone has pain points and your customers are no different.  Tune into what your customers stress about, remind them of why it’s important to act to fix this issue, then angle your copy to present your product or service as the answer to their prayers.

Follow the golden AIDA formula.

The magic formula every copywriter needs to know is Attract, Interest, Desire, Action, or AIDA.  This is an easy way to remember the four key stages your copy needs to move through in order to achieve a successful conversion. 

The AIDA formula in a nutshell:

First ATTRACT customer interest with appealing headers or potent questions. 

Then INTEREST your reader by reminding them of a problem they worry about, or, intrigue them by teasing details of a great new service or product that will help them. 

After that you need to make them DESIRE what you have to offer by framing your product as the perfect solution, or as an irresistible opportunity they just can’t miss out on. 

Finally, you close the deal, by using urgency to encourage your readers to take ACTION right away.  Use a strong call of action that reminds them just what they will be missing out on if they don’t click that buy button now.

Later on in this course, we’ll cover the different types of copywriting and look at strategies to create content that connects.  You’ll learn how to create email campaigns subscribers read, ad copy that converts, and blog articles that attract interest and help you grow your followers.

Website creation

Optimising your website is still an essential step you must take, to show people that your business is reliable and reputable. Luckily, these days you don’t have to understand complex coding or pay someone an exorbitant fee to enhance your website, so it loads fast and is optimised for mobile devices

Now, with easy-to-navigate interfaces you can get your website sleek and streamlined, all by yourself.  There’s also no need to pay anyone to create a website for you, unless you want to. Remarkable platforms like WordPress and Wix enable you to launch a professional looking website in just a few clicks.

We highly recommend using the WordPress platform as you can create standout websites using WordPress Themes. Themes are ready-made website templates you can completely customise to fit your brand’s needs. You can change almost everything to suit, from fonts and icons, to pictures and your logo.

To create a smart looking logo for your brand, it’s easy, and you don’t even need to hire a graphic designer, as there are some easy-to-use online logo creators out there like logomaker.com and Canva.

Displayed here, you can see WordPress’s popular Avada theme, their best-selling theme of all time. You can edit it easily to suit your own website needs by clicking on the text and writing your own content. The other parts of the theme are equally easy to customise, enabling you to insert your own media, videos, carousels, and icons just by dragging and dropping.  Results are displayed immediately, allowing you to create an outstanding website in just minutes, without any coding or design knowledge whatsoever.

Later on in this course, you’ll see us create a stunning WordPress website in the Website Creation chapter, and you’ll be able to copy the step by step instructions to immediately do the same yourself.

You’ll even learn how we’re able to quickly optimise the website’s speed to a GTMetrix Score of A99%, without any coding experience at all.

You can use your newfound ability to create websites to make money fast.  Why not try reaching out to a few businesses in your neighbourhood and offering them a sleek looking, mobile optimised WordPress website  Make sure you ask for a deposit up front, as this will allow you to start your business immediately, without any need of capital or an upfront investment.

Conversion rate optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) refers to the process of optimizing your website to maximize the amount of people that take the desired action you want, like signing up for your newsletter or making a purchase on your website. As you might have guessed, the “Conversion” part happens whenever people take the specific action you desire.

If you run an Ecommerce site for example, a conversion would be when people buy one or more of your products.  If you’re a blogger, a conversion could be a sign up to your email newsletter.

To optimise your conversion rate, you first need to understand visitor’s behaviour on your website.  Even if you don’t have any CRO knowledge, there are tools that can help you to do just that.

Heat maps are a great way to monitor and observe visitor behaviour, and tools like Crazy Egg or HotJar will allow you to easily make use of heat map technology. These handy tools let you track the exact actions your website visitors take– so you can see all the places they like to click and learn what content they enjoy reading or watching.

 HotJar can even screen record each individual visitor action for you. This way you can quickly discover what the strong and weak points of your website are, and can optimise your site to attract more sales, leads, and subscribers.

Video marketing

Do you find you’re creating great content but still not getting the audience you want?  If so, it’s highly likely you’re not creating the right sort of content, as the way people consume content, and the type of content they consume is changing rapidly.  To survive, you must evolve your own content creation strategy, to make sure you’re using the right tools, and using them correctly, and in all the right places.

The average person is not looking for your content, so you need to hunt them out and find them.   Even once you’ve found them, you still need to win their attention, and their trust, which can be difficult with all the competition that’s out there in the digital marketplace. 

The goal is to win their loyalty then get them to purchase and one of the most effective ways you can do this is through video content.

People are lazy, and it’s easier for them to watch a video than it is to get them to read a long article that covers all the same points.  Market research backs this up with evidence, 79% of consumers state they rather find out about a product by watching a video, as opposed to reading an article or text-based ad.

 Try and make it as easy as possible for your intended audience to consume your content.  As video is so in demand, it’s a lot easier to make people engage with content produced in this format than it is any other type of content, particularly text-based copy.

Think of your video content like a visual blog, article, or written ad. Just one small video showcasing the tasty dishes your restaurant serves up will attract many more customers than the best written text content that has thousands of words.

It’s a great idea to base much of your digital marketing strategy on video content as this will only serve you well in the long term. For Facebook and Instagram, short videos in a mobile format will get you the immediate attention you need.   For YouTube you need to put out longer, more informative videos in a standard film format. Give people value, step by step guides, and tutorials, but most of all make your content fun and enjoyable to watch.

Video content is so powerful, just one standout video can completely turnaround your brand, and your profits. This is because people are hungry for video, they love viewing it on social media and Google rates it highly too.  Google loves to show video high up in search results, usually in the 1st position.  One single video could boost your SEO and Social media and help you sell your products or services by the bucketload.

In this course you’ll discover how to create epic videos using just your smartphone. These days smartphone software is of such high quality you really don’t need any extra special equipment. Smartphones are so good now, we even shot several segments of this course on an iPhone 7.

 Our step by step guides will quickly show you how to create professional looking short videos for Facebook and Instagram using just your smartphone and some online editing software.

If you’re still not convinced you should make the switch to video, here’s a few facts that might help change your mind:

• By 2021, 80% of ALL global internet consumption will be video content.
• According to YouTube, mobile video consumption has risen by at least 100% over the past year.
• Businesses using video grow their digital marketing revenue 49% faster, year on year, compared to organisations who don’t use this medium to market.
• 79% of consumers prefer watching video over reading text to learn about a product.
• Video increases your chance of a front-page Google result by 53%!
• 80% of users can recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days.
• Including video on your landing page can increase your conversion rate by 80%.
• 91% of video marketers consider video a crucial part of their marketing strategy.
• People spend over double the amount of time on pages with video than on pages without.  Because of this, video massively increases the dwell time of your page, which has an extremely positive effect on the Google RankBrain algorithm.
• Adding video to your social feeds means your audience is 10x more likely to engage and share your posts.
• Video is shared 1200% more on social media than any other content type.
• 70% of marketers say video is the most effective medium for driving their sales and leads.
• 93% of businesses say they’ve gained new customers thanks to social media video marketing.
• 84% of marketers rank video creation skills as critically important when getting hired for a new marketing position.

With our digital marketing course, you’ll be able to follow step by step blueprints that will teach you how to create and cut magnificent videos, using just your smartphone.

You don’t have to be a famous movie director to be able to shoot high quality video content. In this course, we’ll show you just how easy and cheap it can be to shoot top quality video.  We’ll prove that with just a couple of basic pieces of equipment, and some fundamental computer skills, you can easily and quickly create professional looking content that has a massive reach potential.

As well as this, you’ll learn effective ways to communicate your message and promote your brand without coming across like a cheesy sales commercial. It’s important to bear in mind that people don’t go on Instagram or YouTube to watch ads.  They are there to consume engaging content that appeals to their specific interests, so you don’t need to be a natural salesman to appeal to them.

All you need to do is produce great value, attractive content and then you need to ensure you apply the appropriate digital marketing strategy, so it gets found.

YouTube

YouTube is a vital tool for your brand, as over 80% of all shared online content is now in the video format.

One of the first things you can do to optimize your YouTube views is to customize your video thumbnail.

According to YouTube’s own statistics, 9 out of 10 of the most-viewed videos on YouTube used a bespoke thumbnail.

Thumbnails are BIG, but not just any thumbnails. For maximum results, use BOGY thumbnails, made up of four colours, Blue, Orange, Green, and Yellow.

This is because YouTube is mainly red, black, and white, so if you use these colours you’ll just blend in. Using a BOGY thumbnail comprised of 80% Blue, Green, Orange or Yellow will guarantee you stand out, and attract more people to view your videos.

Another key area you must pay attention to on YouTube, is your video description.

Three steps to optimizing your video descriptions to boost your YouTube views and rankings:

1. Use a strong intro. 

It should be 2-3 sentences and should use your target keywords in the first 1-2 sentences. This is because YouTube places more emphasis on keywords used higher up in the description.  The first few lines should be compelling, as they show up as a snippet in YouTube Search.  People often read descriptions after clicking on your thumbnail and will then decide whether to view or not.

• Make your outline compelling.

After your intro, comes your outline and here’s where you’ll tell people in more detail what they’ll learn if they watch your video.

  Don’t shy away from going into detail in this part, and make sure you write at least 150 words.  Ensure you include the keywords you want your video to rank for, so YouTube can properly understand and score your video content.

• Include links

Don’t forget to include links in your description that direct people towards your website and the social channels you’re most active on.

If you want to nudge subscribers over to a link, make sure to include a short call to action, encouraging people to sign up.

Don’t forget your title. 

This is an important part of your YouTube marketing approach, and according to YouTube themselves, can be the crucial difference between people clicking through to view, or scrolling past.

Annotate your title and add extra punch with a number.  Instead of just saying Handy rust removal techniques, say 5 top Rust Removal Tips instead.

Add brackets and parentheses like [New Checklist] or (Top Tips for 2020) to the end of your title, as a study by HubSpot found that doing so increased clicks by 33%.

Finally, use titles that are between 40-50 characters for maximum success.   Market research has demonstrated titles with less than 50 characters rank best in YouTube search.

TikTok Marketing

 TikTok’s users typically spend around 52 minutes per day on the app, which boasts an average engagement rate of 29%.

TikTok is solely video focused, and the platform allows users to post short clips, edit them, then post them to their followers. Originally the site started out in China as Music.ly but after it rebranded to TikTok it quickly gained traction in the United States and Australia, and now its popular with people all around the globe.

 With more than 90% of users logging in multiple times a day and sky-high user engagement levels, TikTok is rapidly becoming a platform that marketers need to target.

TikTok’s main audience is the 16-24 demographic, and this age group makes up 41% of the total user-base. Though, the social network hasn’t officially released much other demographic info, its likely the 24-30 market makes up another large segment of its audience.

Because of this, TikTok is an ideal platform for marketing if you have a younger target audience.

TikTok only recently introduced paid Ads and these can be a good way to promote your content on the platform.

TikTok ads have a discreet Sponsored note that appears on the bottom corner of each ad, and so your paid for content blends in better than it will on other platforms. Create ad content that will attract the users you’re trying to target, by spending time analysing what type of content they watch what before launching your campaign.

With TikTok ads, the aim should be to capture your audience’s attention early on, preferably in the first 3-5 seconds.  After that, you can get into your core message or pitch, but make sure to keep the tone light and your content engaging.

Of course, you’ll still need to test different ad campaigns out, as well as track, monitor and analyse, just as you would on any other platform.

Free ways to promote on TikTok

There are two other ways you can promote your content on TikTok, without having to pay out for ads on the network; influencer marketing and creating and promoting your own, original content.

There are pros and cons to both, as to get an influencer to feature your brand in their video, you will have to give them an incentive.  This could be payment, or it might be free products, depending on how valuable those products are, and how popular the influencer is.  Some influencers have millions of subscribers, allowing you to tap into a huge audience, without ever having to create any content.

The other advantage of TikTok is that there are so many categories, you can find a niche for nearly everything, from cosmetics, to singing, sports, and baking.  Some of the most popular genres include lip synching, funny or cringey videos, and quick cooking or make-up how to guides.

By targeting an influencer in your niche, you’ll be able to market directly to an audience already interested in your products.  Influencers also have a lot of social trust, and studies have shown one out of three consumers trust an influencer’s opinion over what a brand says.  If you can get a TikTok influencer to feature your products, you can use the trust they have built up with their audience to the advantage of your brand. 

If you want to create and promote your own content on TikTok, there are some key things to remember.

Your content needs to be short, light-hearted and entertaining, preferably with viral potential.  Originality is key, so make sure you create engaging content that stands out and is totally unique. 

The trick to TikTok marketing is to create a short video under 60 seconds that includes all these factors, that also promotes your brand. It’s a great way for your brand to share its story, set video challenges and fun contests, and show the personalities behind your business.

The platform allows users to Like, Comment and Share your content as well as follow you.  Content posted to TikTok generally sees much higher engagement rates than content posted to other social media platforms. It’s important to make sure you tag your TikTok content properly, using relevant hashtags people will look for, and will be interested in.

A great feature of TikTok is the For You feed, which shows users a feed of posts from people they don’t already follow. TikTok selects what will appear in this personalised feed from other posts users have interacted with, to try and display more content users will enjoy. This feed plays automatically, as soon as users open the app, so it’s a great way to get your content seen, especially if you’re new to the platform.  For this reason, you should always use the #foryou tag in addition to the other hashtags you employ.

TikTok was the third most downloaded app in 2019 and has held the No1 spot in over 40 countries app stores at various points in time. Many companies are not yet taking advantage of the platform, so it’s a great idea to get in on the action now, to capture a piece of the market before all your competitors.

Email marketing

Email Marketing is a vital part of any online marketer’s toolkit. This is because email marketing provides you with a direct link to an already interested, targeted subscriber base.

However, it’s important to do it right, as if you spam your potential customers they’ll switch off and quickly unsubscribe.  To retain as many subscribers as possible and turn them into paying customers, you need to give them valuable content they want to help them gain trust in your brand.

 You can also give them special offers, discounts, and coupon codes, but these won’t be as effective as giving them the help and information they need. If they are considering rebuilding a bathroom, for example, and you want them to purchase bathroom furniture from you, giving them smart advice about how to plan and build a new bathroom will be much more valuable than just sending out a promotional code. 

Equally, if you know your subscribers are looking to buy a new video camera, creating a video or blog article that goes into detail about the different types of cameras and their benefits, will help them choose the right one. Instead of pushing people to buy, you should be aiming to subtly persuade them you’re the best choice.

Learning how to create engaging email campaigns and newsletters, will help you:

• Boost your email list subscribers
• Increase your open rates
• Convert more subscribers into customers

Here are five key things you must do to further the success of your email marketing campaigns.

• Plan your email marketing strategy.  Tailor your campaigns to compliment not compete with your other digital marketing efforts.
• Get some reliable email marketing software.  This one is crucial, as you’ll need it to send mass mailouts to your list. Look for software that offers you a wide range of options, great template choices, and the ability to pay to add unlimited subscribers as your list grows.
• Focus on building up your email list.  You can attract subscribers with lead magnets like e-books, or you can highlight your services and expertise through free, informative mini webinars.
• Create lots of engaging autoresponder content.  This is a must do as it saves so much time.  It also helps you stay relevant to your subscribers by automatically sending them useful content.
• Monitor your results and tweak to improve. You can see where you need to focus by assessing your open rates, click-through-rates, conversions, unsubscribes, and subscriber feedback.

mailchimp.com is a superb piece of software if you’re starting a newsletter, because it offers you a free account of up to 2000 subscribers. The platform is also easy to use, and comes with a great selection of ready-made templates, plus it has a design studio, and single automation, all free of charge.

SEO

SEO is critically important to your online marketing success, as nearly 60% of all traffic on the web starts with a Google search. If you add in the traffic originating from other major search engines, like YouTube, Facebook Bing, and Yahoo!, this figure is even higher, with 71% of all traffic coming from search!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of getting targeted traffic to a website or page, from a search engine’s organic rankings. SEO includes creating high-value content, optimizing that content around specific keywords, and building high authority backlinks.

The trick to winning with SEO is to optimize your site for the search engine you want to rank highly on, whether that’s Google, Bing, Amazon, or YouTube. You must make sure a search engine sees your site as the best answer to a person’s search. How the different search engines determine the “best” result is based on a unique algorithm that evaluates several different factors, including quality of content, backlinks, uptime, traffic, and speed.

The most important factor is your content quality and the amount of traffic your website gets.  If you had to boil a great SEO strategy down to one simple sentence it would be this – You should aim to create a website people love.

Search engines are set up to measure several different signals across the Web so they can crawl it and find the most popular websites. You can’t cheat this, but you can game search by making sure you send out all the right signals, and ensuring those signals are authentic, and not artificial.

Modern SEO goes far beyond meta tags and backlinks. You also need to get up to speed with featured snippets, rich snippets, video snippets, voice search, and Video SEO, as well as Google RankBrain. We’ll take a deep dive into all these areas and how you can use them to turbo charge your marketing results, later in this course.

Before you do anything else SEO related, you need to focus on your content to assess whether the search engines will like and score it highly.

If you’re publishing text-based content for example, then you should know Google hates short articles. Google’s highest-ranking articles all have a word count of between 1900-2200 words.  This is so searchers get comprehensive information, from a helpful article that addresses the exact issues the searcher is querying about. 

Evergreen content is best, an article on the top four best smartphones is going to go out of date fast as new models are released near-constantly.   An article like that is only good for a short period of time and won’t generate you continuous hits over a longer period.

If you’re creating text-based content the most important factor is how unique it is. If you haven’t taken the trouble to ensure your content is fresh and original and are just lazily using the same phrases and keywords as everyone else, then you’re not going to score highly. 

In this course, you’ll learn smart tricks that will help you cleverly choose your words, so you rank above your competition.  The trick is to use certain words and place them in specific spots and you’ll discover exactly how to do this in later lessons. If you apply our tactics, you’ll boost the search engine ranking your text-based content gets, even if you already rate well, and even if your content is in a popular, or overcrowded niche.

If you want to keep people reading, it’s also important to include visuals in your text, or they’ll just switch off.  Use clean layouts, with plenty of sub-headers to break up blocks of text and incorporate pictures, charts, infographics, and video to annotate your copy.  Video is especially effective, as studies have found visitors will spend much more time on pages that have this type of content embedded. Layout is important, too as misplaced or awkwardly positioned multimedia will only confuse your readers.  In this course you’ll learn how to create great layouts that encourage people to stay engaged with your content. 

Getting good reviews from your professional peers, or recognition from people in your industry sector, is another way to boost your position in search.  Google uses the EAT system, which looks at the Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness of your site to assess the legitimacy of your content and rank you accordingly. It’s helpful to think of this system as a kind of internet credit check, which you can build up and strengthen by taking certain actions.

Backlinks are a great way to improve your EAT score, as Google tracks these to see how many people are linking back to your page.  Lesser known sites give you a smaller score, while more popular websites give you a better boost, so it’s wise to try and get props from the bigger players.  It’s also much better to have relevant links from sites within your niche rather than general links from random sites, so focus on targeting those sector-specific sites.

Authors are also crucial and if you can, always attribute your content to recognized experts, or people who have higher EAT scores.  This factor is ultra-important when it comes to building your brand’s authority and protecting its reputation, as both people and search engines will look to see if the information your putting out there comes from credible sources.

Google also looks at your mentions, to see what others are saying about you on other sites. If a lot of people are trashing your brand on high authority sites, this will negatively affect your score. On the other hand, if your content has lots of likes and positivity, this will give you a big boost.

To ensure your content meshes well with search engine algorithms, you need to make sure your website is laid out clearly, so Google can easily crawl it for keywords.  You should aim to evenly divide up your page into sections, instead of just posting everything as one big blob.  This will not only aid Google, it will also help your readers, and encourage them to stick around. 

Finally, don’t forget Google Ranking Factors.  You don’t have to master all 200 to succeed, instead you focus on the smaller set of factors that will make the biggest difference to your search position.

Top six SEO success tips you can follow to boost your discoverability:

Place your main keyword early

Use your primary keyword as high up in your content as possible, preferably in the first 25 words, as Google places more relevance on terms that appear at the top of a webpage.

Be original

Use unique titles, alongside fresh descriptions, content, Meta description tags, and Image alt text, because Google will score you much higher. In fact, they’ve even stated that to rank well, you must avoid having “duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.”

Tweak Your Title Tag

Use one keyword per title, and front load your keyword by using it as early as possible in your tag.  Spend some time thinking up and creating engaging and compelling titles that will make people stop, click through and then share.  The more click throughs and shares you receive the higher your SEO ranking will climb.

Optimize your site loading speed.

This is an important factor if you want to rank highly, so much so Google explicitly say so in their policy, despite not typically mentioning ranking factors.

Compress your images, use lightweight themes, and consider using lazy loading, which can boost your site’s speed by up to 50%. 

Monitor your ranking

Use the Google Search Console to track your progress, particularly the Performance, Coverage, and Enhancements reports.

The Performance report will allow you to track your keywords, discoverability, and click through rate, allowing you to see what works and what doesn’t.  This will help you refine your approach over time.

Use Coverage to check for any indexing errors and fix these as soon as possible.  Indexing errors may mean Google can’t crawl your site, so it’s important to get rid of them to ensure your page can be found.

Enhancements will let you assess your Mobile Usability, a vital factor, considering how many people access content through their smartphones. Google’s index is now mobile first, making it even more important to ensure this area is optimized.

Use Internal linking

Add links from one page to another on your site and use keyword rich anchor text to tell Google what your page is about.  Make sure your anchor text always includes your main keyword, to maximize the effect.

Don’t just link random pages though, make sure the pages you link are relevant to each other to ensure an optimum score. 

You can use internal linking to boost pages that have a low link authority, helping to boost their Google score.  A great way to do this is to link older pages, which tend to have a higher link authority, to newer content.

Local SEO

Local SEO is becoming an increasingly important factor, as 46% of all searches in Google have a “local intent”.

According to Google, “Near me” searches have grown at an even faster rate, 150% more than normal, local-based searches.

With 74% of all consumers who search for a local product or service going on to visit a store that day, you’ll want to get in on the action.

Here are the major factors Google considers when ranking a business for local search.  Make sure you optimize these, so you can get found by relevant customers easier and faster.

Top Google Local Search Ranking Factors:

• Location the person is searching from
• Number of NAP citations – this is relevant to MAP rankings. NAP citations stand for Name, Address, Phone number, and the more they are mentioned, the more they help Google affirm that you are a local business. 
• Whether or not the brand has a Google My Business listing
• Keywords used in Google My Business profile
• Amount of positive or negative online reviews
• Keywords used in online reviews
• Number of “check-ins” logged at the brand location
• Number of Shares on social media
• Google Maps star rating for the brand

Make sure you monitor your MAP ranking…

Google’s MAP pack is a set of 3 local business results with a map of their locations pulled from Google Maps, that’s given to users who search for a business near them.

It’s also displayed when Google thinks it’s relevant, even when users haven’t used a local search location, so it is an important factor you need to consider.

Don’t forget local organic search results…

Even though the MAP Pack is becoming increasingly more relevant, and the results are displayed above organic search, you don’t want to neglect traditional local search.

To score highly in local organic rankings, you need to do proper keyword research using a tool such as Yelp Suggest or Google Suggest, and use the Google Keyword Planner to take a deep dive into data for specific geo-locations.

Include your main keyword in your title tag, and your URL, and make sure you’ve optimized your website SEO with relevant local search keywords. Include quality authoritative back links too, in order to drive maximum traffic to your page.

Most importantly… Set up and take care of your Google my business profile

To do this enter Google my business in Google search and click through to set up your Google my business profile. Add your information, including opening hours, photos, and videos. It’s smart to keep your Google my business listing updated, so try and add news every single week.

In this course you’ll find tutorials that will help you understand why you should never underestimate this extremely powerful marketing tool.  If you’re in a hurry, you can follow our fast track guide, but for complete beginners we recommend our 2-hour step by step walk through tutorial. On many of the blueprints shown in this course you’ll see why Google my business is crucial for your brand.

WhatsApp to boost your local business

WhatsApp is a fantastic tool to implement in your local business marketing as it has so many uses. You can use it to reduce call centre costs or do away with the need for actual call staff entirely, by using AI- bots to answer your customers queries and direct them to further help resources.  Because WhatsApp is such a popular application, it’s familiar to a vast number of people, which makes it much easier to set up customer support using this platform.

You can use WhatsApp to push important service announcements and updates to your customers phones, and you can also use it send out notifications on order status, including dispatches and deliveries.  It can be used to set up appointments and to remind customers of upcoming appointments, without the need to use text messaging services. If you’re the owner of a local service-based business you can even take and book orders using the app, then use it to send out helpful reminders.

WhatsApp’s handy labelling function helps you to separate the different types of messaging you send out, while the quick replies feature lets you save and reuse frequently sent messages. This saves you a lot of time when it comes to answering the most common queries.

WhatsApp business profiles allow you to share important information with your customers, like your address, business description, email address, phone number, and website. 

You can use automated Messages to set an away response when you can’t answer your customers, allowing you to tell them directly when they can expect a human response.  You can also use the greeting message feature to share your current promotions and introduce customers to your brand.

When it comes to your promotions, you can use WhatsApp to share videos, audio clips, pdfs, and doc.x files, without any of the size or file limitations email or text messaging typically comes with.  If you have a local business, WhatsApp is a fantastic promotional tool that you should seriously consider incorporating into your digital marketing approach.

Facebook marketing for local businesses

Facebook’s best use for digital marketers is as a platform to raise awareness of your brand, build followers, and boost customer loyalty.

Five fantastic ways to use Facebook Ads to improve your local digital marketing:

Observe your rivals

You can see how your competitors are doing using your Facebook business page’s built in function.  Just click on insights, and scroll down to Function Pages to Watch, add your competitors to the performance overview and in just a second you can directly compare their performance with yours.  You can also use this tool to see what content is getting them the results you want, then apply this information to your own promotional strategy.

Use Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook is a literal goldmine of demographic information about prospective customers, including their interests, employment history, age, and relationship status. It also offers extremely precise geo-targeting right down to postcode level, allowing you to target your ads to the exact market segment you want to reach.

One of the best things about Facebook is that you can use it to get important data in seconds. Search Google for “Facebook Audience Insights” and click on the link.  Within moments you’ll be able to use an easy online application that will give you valuable marketing insights many research companies charge hundreds for.

Post content with maximum appeal

Make sure all your content is carefully targeted to your main follower demographic, so you are posting only what people want to read about and learn about.  Use visual or video to compliment your text posts and make sure you use a killer cover photo of your local business. Try posting competitions and fun polls to up follower engagement and consider using your Facebook Timeline to share your brand’s history and tell your story.

Partner with local charities to boost your reach and win community trust

Giving a percentage of your sales or profits to local charities and nonprofits can be an excellent way to show your business is engaged with the community in your area.  It’s a great strategy to win public trust and helps to raise awareness of your brand.  People are often willing to purchase products or services where a percentage of their purchase will go to a cause they care about and are also more likely to share charity posts with their social media network.

Use the power of Facebook Reach Ads

99.9 % of all Facebook marketers are currently failing to harness the full power of Facebook Reach ads. This is because most people tend to focus on conversion, which is important, but not the whole story.  Facebook Reach Ads are an incredibly effective tool local businesses can use to build brand awareness. 

They help you zone in on your location and attract as many customers in your area as possible, for as low a price as possible.  You can include pictures, video, or galleries in your Reach Ads but always remember that a strong call to action in the text is a MUST, and you should also include your brand’s contact information. 

Reach Ad text should be short, direct and immediately engaging.  The aim here is to stop your potential customers in their tracks while they are scrolling through their timeline, and make them want to read your Facebook Reach ad.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is a vital tool for your brand, but it’s no good just jumping on and posting away or chucking money at Facebook Ads and hoping for the best.  

The secret of Facebook success is having great content combined with precise targeting and smart retargeting.

There are some crucial things you must do to position your brand to thrive on Facebook, or you’ll just be wasting your time, or throwing money away on Ads that won’t perform.

Facebook Fundamentals

First, make sure your Facebook Business Page cover stands out with an appealing picture or engaging video.

Use your page to tell a story about your brand and state what you’re offering and what you do clearly.

Make sure you’ve connected your Facebook Business Page to your Instagram Profile, so you can harness the full power of both platforms.

Set up your Facebook Business Manager account. 

In Business Manager you’ll find Facebook Ads Manager, catalogue feeds, and the Facebook Pixel events manager. Here you’ll also be able to set up and control custom and lookalike audiences for smarter targeting and retargeting.

How to rank higher on Facebook

Shares are the most highly rated form of engagement on Facebook, followed by Comments and then Likes.  You can boost your followers by inviting everyone who gives you a Like to your Facebook Business Page.

Most people fail on Facebook because they don’t understand Facebook’s new 3 Key Ranking Metrics.

This is how you will achieve your position on Facebook and having a higher score will help your brand get found faster.

When deciding how to score your brand and content Facebook considers:

• Quality of your content (how informative or valuable your posts are compared to your competitors)
• Engagement rate (number of Likes, Shares etc.…)
• Conversion Rate Ranking (measures your brand performance compared to your competitors)

The customer journey is vital

Another factor you must consider is the 3 Stage Customer Journey to Purchase.

The Customer Journey can be compared to a relationship, in a relationship the goal is to get commitment, but in this case the commitment you’re seeking is to get the customer to buy. 

Before they will commit to purchase though, customers must…

First – discover your brand and get to know you,

Two – trust you,

So that …

Three – they can make the decision to commit i.e. purchase.

This is where Facebook Ads come in.

To achieve the first stage of the customer journey, you need to reach potential customers and you can do this by using Reach Ads and Brand Awareness Ads.

Raising your profile on Facebook

Reach Ads and Brand Awareness Ads are specially designed to help you reach as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible.

Use videos, pictures or picture galleries, or pictures with good text, in your Reach Ads. Make sure you include links and contact details.

Your targeting will be wider when placing these types of Ads and should mainly be focused on Location, Income, Interest, and Age.

Winning customer’s trust

Once you’ve made people aware you exist, you need to engage them and make them view you as the superior choice, so you can go on to achieve the second stage of the Customer Journey.

Create strong, appealing content with a heavy emphasis on engaging visuals.  Use picture galleries, professionally shot videos, and always accompany your text content with an image.

During this phase you can also place Messenger Ads to automatically chat with your customers and you can use Lead Ads to generate a stream of new, interested customers.

You can also create Facebook Traffic Ads to drive people to your website and prime them for retargeting via Dynamic Conversion Ads.  This way, you can reel people in using Ads precisely targeted to the products or services they’ve already expressed an interest in.

Close the deal

This is the third stage of the Customer Journey and is where your targeting should become more precise.

Use the power of Custom and Lookalike audiences to precision target your Ads.

Custom and Lookalike audiences can be used to target:

1. People visiting your webpage
2. People who’ve performed a desired action on your webpage, like started the checkout process
3. People who’ve engaged with your Facebook Business Page
4. People engaging with your Instagram Profile
5. Customer lists you’ve uploaded into Facebook Business Manager
6. People who’ve been watching your videos

You can boost your targeting and retargeting results by using Localized Audiences, to create an identical target pool of people, highly similar to the ones who’ve already been engaging with your brand on Facebook, or who have made a purchase, or visited your website.

The importance of the Facebook Pixel

Setting up the Facebook Pixel correctly on your website is critical if you want to convert, but though many websites offer full Facebook Pixel integration, most people still fail to do a complete setup.

It’s not enough to just copy and paste the Facebook Pixel code, you also need to use the Advent tool on Google Chrome to get the maximum out of this Facebook feature.

Mark customer events like clicking on the Contact button, searching for a product or location, or initiating checkout.  In later videos, you’ll learn how to correctly setup the Facebook Pixel in easy to follow step by step detail.

Once you’ve initiated the Facebook Pixel, you can employ Conversion Ads, which are special types of Ads designed to drive audiences to your website who are highly likely to purchase.

To max the effectiveness of Conversion Ads you’ll hone your retargeting to focus on people who’ve already visited your page, Instagram Profile, or engaged with your Facebook Business Profile.

You can also incorporate standard targeting such as Age, Interest, Location, and Income, to super boost your results.

Your website must be optimized to perform well, if you want to get the best results and convert more people from Facebook.

Get Dynamic

The most powerful types of Facebook Ads are Dynamic Ads, also known as catalogue sales.  These allow you to retarget your website visitors dynamically, according to the content they’ve been viewing on your website. They also enable you to retarget people who’ve begun but not finished the checkout process.

Dynamic Ads are an incredibly potent retargeting tool and require automated synchronization with ecommerce platforms like Shopify.

You must correctly set up the Facebook Pixel to use these Ads, but you also need to set up catalogue feeds for standard websites to be able to employ this super effective type of Facebook Ad.

Instagram Ads

Now you can advertise on Instagram through Facebook’s advertising platform, which gives you total control over your Insta ads.  You can target how they appear, and who views them, and post directly from your own Instagram account.

There are five types of Instagram Ads you can run through the Facebook platform and these include:

• Photo Ads
• Video Ads
• Slideshow Ads
• Story Ads
• Carousel Ads

With your Insta campaigns, you should have one or a max of two of the following objectives in mind, whenever you set up an Ad.

Choose from:

• Growing your reach
• Raising brand awareness
• Gaining more traffic to your website
• Getting people to download your app
• Encouraging people to interact with your content
• Getting people to view your videos
• Generating Leads
• Getting Conversions

Don’t try and hit all these objectives in one Ad, as you’ll likely only be ineffective in all areas.  By focusing on just one or two objectives per Ad, your impact will be much more potent.

LinkedIn marketing

LinkedIn is a vital platform for marketing because its members typically drive 4 out of 5 of all business decisions taken. The most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies, LinkedIn’s audience has double the buying power of normal web audiences, making it a crucial place for B2B lead generation.

You can use LinkedIn in a targeted way to promote awareness of your brand to key decision makers.  To get started, you’ll need to sign up and create an account, optimise your profile, and create an effective company profile.

Your Company Page should give your potential customers an opportunity to learn about your brand, meet your team, and discover your contact details.  You should link your LinkedIn company page to your website and other social media and should insert keywords into your page that represent who you are and what you do.  It’s also crucial that you keep your page regularly updated with highly relevant content that will be of interest to your target audience.

Focus on increasing your Company Page follower, as the more you have, the greater the reach potential each update you publish will have.

To expand your Company Page following, you’ll need to promote your page outside of the LinkedIn platform. One way of doing this is by inviting your contacts and subscribers to become followers of your page. You can also promote your Company Page in your email newsletters and blog posts, and on social media, to encourage your readers to become followers.

Don’t forget to add a “Follow on LinkedIn” button to your website to make it easy for your visitors to follow your page.

Once you’ve set up your profile and page, head over to Campaign Manager, which is LinkedIn’s one-stop advertising platform. From there, you’ll be able to set up ad accounts, create and run your campaigns, and control the budget you allot to your ad spend.

The platform allows you to select your main objective, whether that be lead generation or increasing brand awareness.  Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to better customise your campaign. 

After you’ve selected your primary objective, the platform will allow you to choose and build an audience, set your budget, then upload the creative content for your advert. After that, all you need to do is enter your payment details then hit launch on your campaign.

With a 14% increase in users since the end of 2018, if you want to promote your products to people with real purchasing power, you’ll want to make use of LinkedIn.

Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest’s active user base grew by 26% to in the past year with 77% of weekly pinners now saying they’ve discovered a new brand or product on the platform. Pinterest is a useful platform you can use to promote any sort of content, including text-based articles, providing they have an image you can pin.  It also has its own loyal user base, who frequently use the platform to make purchasing decisions.

90% of Pinterest users say they search out content on the platform before they make a commitment to purchase.

There are both personal and business account options available, but if you’re using the platform to promote, you should opt for a business account.  This will give you access to Pinterest Analytics, as well as other handy tools, such as visual search.  If you choose a business account, you’ll also be able to run Pinterest ad campaigns to promote your products to users.

Pinterest works by letting you share content to Pinterest boards, and you can have as many of these as you like.  You can have dedicated boards for specific themes or topics, to help your audience find exactly what they’re seeking.

Engagement is important on Pinterest, so make sure you follow your competitors, add their followers and regularly post new brand content to your board.  You should also interact, so Like, and comment on Pins, re-Pin, and share your website and blog links in your own Pins. Unlike Instagram, Pinterest allows users to click through to live links.

You can also add in relevant content you find on the platform, or pin content you discover on the web, using the Pinterest browser button.

A great way to increase your engagement on Pinterest is by inviting people to join your board and contribute.  This makes your board a group board and enables users to add content that fits in with your board theme.  This is an excellent way to encourage participation and make people feel like they are part of your brand.  You can run contests this way, or encourage participation in other promotions, group activities, or campaigns.

Here are some more top tips for maxing your Pinterest following and engagement rate:

• Promote your Pinterest account across your other social platforms.
• Follow accounts you want to follow you back.
• Observe your competition to see how they are successfully building up their follower base and apply their strategies.
• Do market research to discover relevant keywords and hashtags to use in your Pinterest posts.
• Ask relevant Pinterest influencers to re-post some of your content to help you reach their audience.
• Open a Pinterest ads account and run paid ad campaigns on the platform.

Don’t overlook Pinterest, as it’s a great tool you can use to market your content.  The platform has an engaged base with over half of all users logging on weekly.  It’s users are also affluent, with over 50% earning $50K or greater per year, which makes it a significant market segment if you’re looking to promote.

Twitter Marketing

You can use Twitter to achieve a variety of objectives, whether you want to humanize your brand, build buzz, expand your reach, or provide fast customer support.

Before you do anything on Twitter, you need to lay out a clear plan.  You need to decide what you want to achieve and make sure all your content on the platform aligns with this objective.

It’s a good idea to start off with your brand’s main goals.  These could be:

• Generating leads and sales
• Increasing customer loyalty
• Building brand and product awareness
• Slashing your customer support costs

Then you can get more specific, assigning steps you can take to meet each goal. If your main objective is to generate more leads for example, you could set yourself a target of generating 60 email sign ups via Twitter every month.  Don’t try to be all things to all people.  Instead, take the time to get to know your target audience, then craft a niche content strategy that will appeal to their needs.

Integrate Twitter with your overall social strategy but take the time to post unique content, specifically created for the platform too.  This might seem like a time-consuming step to take but posting authentic, original content focused on Twitter’s user base will pay dividends in the long run.

Top Twitter Tips

• Generate leads – Discover what people who already engage with your brand on the platform are interested in.  Analyse why they are sharing your content and learn who they’re sharing it with.
• Partner up with industry influencers to expand your market reach
• Monitor your competition, using analytics tools like Sprout or Tweepsmap to examine their high-engagement tweets, mentions, hashtags, follower base, and more.
• Discover relevant trending topics – and include these hashtags in your posts
• Proofread your content before posting, and always add visuals to your Tweets to max engagement.
• Use Twitter management tools like Audiense to keep track of your followers and unfollows, and quickly shed inactive followers and bots.
• Use a content scheduler like Hootsuite or Buffer to time your posts for optimum impact
• Analyse the performance of your content to see what performs well and what doesn’t

Don’t forget to optimise your Twitter profile, as this is an excellent way to tell the world about your brand.  Include an attractive image and header, include location detail in your bio if you’re a local brand, and remember to use hashtags so you can get found easily. Your copy should be catchy and to the point, as you only get 160 characters.  It should instantly communicate your brand’s core message to any users who might be browsing.

Podcast marketing

The popularity of Podcasts is growing fast, with an average of 32% of adults in the US alone, listening to at least one podcast in the past month. This percentage has grown by 10% compared to a decade ago.  Research conducted by Nielsen shows that podcast listeners come from an ideal consumer demographic for many marketers, as they tend to be relatively affluent, young, and highly educated.

Advertising via podcasts is extremely cheap, especially when compared to radio ads or TV.  This makes it a great way to promote your own content, attract a bigger following, or get the word out about your business, product, or service.

Eight easy steps to get started with podcasting:

• Choose your core objective – Is it for networking purposes, to raise brand awareness, to monetize, or to directly convert?
• Choose your Topic – Go as niche as you can here but make sure your topic is relevant to your goal and will target your ideal audience. You also should make sure the topic you pick has a big enough audience, and that you can go in depth enough to produce material to cover several episodes.
• Select a Format – You’ll need to choose whether your podcast will be a one-off episode, or part of a series. You’ll also need to decide whether it will be discussion based, an interview, or more of a how to, with tips and handy strategies.
• Choose a Name – This is an important step as it can make or break whether people click through to listen. Your name should be short, catchy, and easy to remember, and should clearly describe your podcast content. Ideally, it should also have the relevant matching dot.com name available.
• Outline your recording schedule – First, decide how regularly you’re going to publish, then sit down and script out your first instalment, outlining the core points that you want to cover.  Finally, schedule your podcast into your content creation calendar.
• Prepare your equipment – You don’t need much kit, as you can record your first episode using nothing more than your phone or laptop. Minimize any echoing by placing yoga mats, duvets, or rugs on the floor.
• Record and Edit – There are some superb free software choices including Audacity and Anchor, as well as paid pro options like Adobe Audition.
• Host Your Podcast – To get people to listen to your podcast, you’ll need a podcast host, so your audio files can get an assigned RSS feed that the various podcast apps can pick up on.  Podcast hosting is built into the Anchor platform but if you want to use other software, you’ll need to first sign up to a podcast host like BuzzSprout or Transistor, and then upload your files.

Don’t forget to Optimize Your Podcast Settings

To help podcast directories learn what your podcast is about, you need to enter information that will help you get properly categorized.  Make sure you add your title, description, categories, artwork, and any other relevant detail that will help get you found and include keywords in your title and description, to boost discoverability.

BONUS TIP:

Most people listen to podcasts on Apple Podcasts, where you have roughly 8 weeks to get featured in the New and Noteworthy category, after you launch an episode.  If you can get lots of downloads, positive reviews, and subscriptions to your podcast, you may get featured in this category.  Try and intensively promote each podcast episode as soon as possible after they are published, as getting featured this way will give your podcast a huge boost in audience.

Google Ads

 Google Ads are a great way to boost your brand profile, generate more leads and traffic, and gain more conversions.

The Google Ads platform focuses on Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, where advertisers pay per impression on an ad. PPC marketing is a tailorable, affordable form of web marketing, but to succeed, and not waste money, you must take the right approach. Typically it takes many years of experience to gain the in-depth knowledge neccesary to get the most out of your PPC campaign.  

With this course, we aim to get you on the road to success faster, and as long as you are willing to put the work in, and apply our techniques and strategies,  you’ll be well equipped with everything you need to succeed.

There are four main types of Ads you can run on the Google platform:

• Search ads – Text ads that are displayed with search results when people use Google to look for information.
• Display ads – Image-based Ads, that are displayed on websites in the Google Display Network.
• Video ads – YouTube Ads that last between six and 15 seconds long.
• Google Shopping Ads – Showcase products from your catalogue to an already interested market sector – great for targeting and retargeting

The strength of advertising with Google lies in its massive market reach and the ability it gives you to create highly targeted campaigns. With Google Ads you can drive quality traffic to your brand, garnered from people searching Google for products and services, similar to the ones you’re offering.

To boost your reach, ads from Google often feature across other platforms, including YouTube, Blogger, and the Google Display Network.

Another great feature of Google Ads is the Google Ads Analytics dashboard, which allows you to monitor the performance of your ads over time.  This helps you hone the effectiveness of your Google Ads and adjust your content and target audience for a more optimal return on your investment.

It’s definitely worth investing in Google Ads, as even if you’re ranking well organically, your results are likely to appear lower than those who have paid to promote.

There are some steps you can take to ensure a better return on your ad expenditure. 

Here are some handy tips to creating winning Google Ad campaigns:

Niche down your keywords.

Using too bland keywords will put your ad in front of the wrong audience, and won’t deliver you as many click throughs. For best results, monitor which keywords generate the highest amount of clicks, then match these with your ad content.

Make sure your ad content is relevant

If your keywords are getting searched for but your header and body copy doesn’t reflect these, you won’t get many click throughs.  It’s no good just using popular terms, your ad content needs to reflect that what you’re offering is relevant to what people are searching for.

Create emotive Ad content

Customers won’t click if your ad copy is blah or doesn’t strike a strong emotion.  Ideally, your copy should be directly addressing people’s desires or worries, and also should offer them a solution they need.

Improve your Google PPC quality score

Google uses your PPC Quality Score (QS) to decide how your ad should rank. The higher your quality score, the better your position will be.  This score factors in how relevant your landing page and ads are to the keywords you’ve selected and also assesses your expected clickthrough rate.

There are 4 main components to the PPC Quality Score system:

• Quality Score – An estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person who views your ad
• Landing page experience – Weighs up how relevant and helpful your landing page is to browsers who click on your ad.
• Ad relevance – Monitors how closely your keyword matches the main message in your ads.
• Expected clickthrough rate (CTR)- Assesses the likelihood of your ad being clicked when it is shown. This score will be based on the past clickthrough performance of your ads.

There are several ways to improve your Google PPC Quality Score:

• Feature relevant keywords and ensure your ad copy matches your keywords and landing page. Use keywords in your ad text, to show people your ad is directly relevant to their search.
• Ensure your landing page is helpful to the market sector you’re targeting with your Google Ad. On your landing page, make use of groups of keywords that directly relate to your ad theme, instead of generic one word keywords.  Say Islington organic spa, not spa.
• Make sure your ad copy is relevant to the people you are displaying your ads to, so they are more likely to click. Consider making more specific ads so you can go niche with your message and focus on a single product or service.

Experiment

You’ll definitely need to try different combinations of keywords, content, and audience targeting to arrive at the best results with Google Ads.  Google automatically rotates all ads within ad groups you set up, and will display your top performing ad more frequently. After a while, you’ll be able to see which ads get more clickthroughs which is one way of learning what content works best.

Consider switching to the Google Ads rotate option

Google Ads default setting is optimize, and this is set to show your best performing ads based on their clickthrough rate. However, research has demonstrated that clickthrough rate is not always the best measure of success.  It’s often better to measure the performance of your PPC Ads by conversions, like sales, leads, sign-ups, downloads.

 Switching to the rotate option in Google Ads dashboard allows you to override the optimize setting, so Google will display all the ads you have in one group equally.

When all your ads receive the same number of impressions, you’ll be able to compare what really delivers you those conversions you want, as analysing your ad performance will be far easier when every ad receives a similar view count.

Optimise your Landing Page

Once users click through to your page, what they experience is just as important as your ad copy. Make sure your landing page matches the tone of your ad and is optimized for conversions.  Use an attractive layout, and the same keywords.  As well, ensure your content hits browser’s pain points and that you’re offering people a solution that will solve a problem they have.

Make use of Ad Extensions

Ad Extensions let you supplement your Google ad with one of five additional features for no extra cost. You can select from a Sitelink, Call button, Location info, or App download link, or can choose to showcase an Offer instead.

Google Merchant Centre and Google Shopping

Another thing you want to make the most of is the suite of tools offered by Google Merchant Centre, which allows you to upload and update your product information, including images and pricing.  This information will then be displayed in relevant Google Shopping searches.

Merchant Centre is integrated into other Google services, like Google My Business, giving you the opportunity to completely control all your Google-based marketing and ecommerce.

To sign up for Google Merchant Centre, you need a Google Account, and a verified website and business verified by Google My Business.  Your e-commerce platform must also offer the ability to sync data with Google Merchant Centre.

To start displaying your products, you should have all your product data in a format Google can accept, like a TXT or XML file.  Make sure to include all information, including pricing, product, availability and shipping details.

Why you need to be using Merchant Centre:

• Increase your visibility – People searching Google for related products will be able to browse your brand’s entire product range in a catalogue format.
• Google AdWords integration – All products listed in the Google Merchant Center can be easily linked to specific AdWords. 
• Remarketing – You can use Merchant Centre to deploy Google and YouTube remarketing and retargeting techniques to remind visitors of previously-viewed products and reel them back in.
• Google Analytics support  – If you’re an Analytics user, you can add a Custom Segment specifically for your Google Merchant Center hits, allowing you to monitor these stats separately.
• Online product reviews – Google Merchant integrates public reviews of products into your listing, with their star ratings visible.  If you have 4.5- and 5-star products, they’ll receive preferential placement.
• Push traffic to your website –  People clicking public Google Merchant listings will be taken directly to your ecommerce store.
• Google Local Search integration – Your listing can include your geo-location which will allow you to direct buyers to your local store.

Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an absolutely essential tool if you’re promoting an e-commerce site or running any kind of business online.

With Google Analytics dashboard, you can view all your data including traffic stats in one spot.  This is one of the most vital tools in your marketing armoury as you can discover so much useful information that will allow you to optimise, adjust, and improve.

With Google Analytics you can:

• See how people visit your website and where your visitors are located in the world
• Discover if your website is mobile optimised and how many of your visitors are discovering your site from mobile devices
• Find out which websites are sending traffic to your page
• Discover which of your marketing campaigns are driving the most traffic to your website
• Learn which pages on your website are the most viewed
• See how many of your site visitors have converted into leads or customers
• Find out where converting visitors came from and where they go after visiting your site
• Learn how to improve and optimise your website’s speed
• See what blog content your visitors like the most

You can set up your Google Analytics account using any Google account, but make sure it’s your account and not your web designer’s, web developer’s, or web host’s.

 This is important because if you and another person have a working disagreement or part ways, they can take all your Analytics data, and you’ll have to begin again.

Top tips to getting the most out of Google Analytics:

• Sign up to Google Analytics, create an account and choose what websites you want associated under that account. Choose where your Analytics Data can be shared and get your tracking code.
• Install your Analytics tracking code on every page of your website. If you have a WordPress site in your own domain, you can use the Monster Insights plugin. This plugin allows you to enable all advanced Google analytics tracking features in just a few clicks, and comes with a Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress that displays actionable analytics reports from your WordPress dashboard. 
• Activate the Goals Setting.  This is a handy feature of Analytics, which can be found through clicking the Admin link at the top of Google Analytics, then clicking on Goals under your website’s View column. Goals tell Google Analytics when something important has happened on your website, like when your visitors end up on a confirmation page, once they’ve made a purchase or subscribed. 
• Set up site Search.  If you have a website with a search box at the top, activating this feature through Analytics will give you really valuable info, as it will tell you what your visitors are searching for.
• Use the Compare feature to track progress. You can track how you’re performing month on month by using the compare feature found in Audience Overview.
• Make the most of tools that simplify your Analytics data insights.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed by Google Analytics, you can simplify your data reports with tools like Quill Engage. Quill Engage is free for up to ten website profiles, and will summarize your Analytics data, making it easy for you to get an overview of how your site is performing.

Add value to your Analytics experience  with Google Tag Manager

Google Ads conversion tags are a great way to deepen your Google Analytics experience. They help build reports that let you view what happens after a customer clicks on your ads.  This way, you can find out whether your click throughs go on to purchase,sign up for your newsletter, call you, or download your app.

If you want to ensure you’re getting the most out of your Google Ads budget, you’ll need this type of insight. Google Ads Tag Manager is an extremely helpful, free tool that can help you gather the information you need, quickly and easily.

What is Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager allows you to effortlessly add and update your Google Analytics code and other tags on your site without having to manually write a single line of code.

This is a super efficient and time saving way to manage and update the different types of tags on your website. A tag is a piece of tracking code or snippet of Javascript that sends information about your site to a third party, like Google.

Tag Manager also can optimize page loading speed, both on your landing page and all other pages that have Tag Manager code installed. This is important, not only to encourage users to stick around, but also because it is a factor in the Google Search main ranking algorithm.

Why do you need Tag Manager?

Many third party analytics tools can have the downside of slowing your website down. Installing Google Tag Manager lets you take advantage of these tools without adding to your page loading speed.

As well as this, lots of clicks aren’t automatically tracked even if you have Analytics installed, unless you activate event tracking. File downloads and embedded video views aren’t automatically tracked, meaning they won’t show up automatically in the regular analytics dashboard.  To see them, you need to activate event tracking but this can be time consuming and fiddly as you have to enable and update all your download links for it to work.

There is a handy shortcut you can use.  If you’ve correctly  installed Google Tag Manager on your site, you can quickly add a new tag into your Tag Manager to set up file download tracking.

Using Google Tag Manager, you can deploy various types of tracking code on your site, including Google Analytics.

To set up event tracking, you first create a tag and then a trigger in Google Tag Manager.  In this course we’ll show you how to do this in step by step detail, later on.

Heat Maps

Heat Map tools like Crazy Egg and Hot Jar allow you to easily visualize complex statistical data.

They show you one image that encapsulates everything you need to know about where visitors are clicking on your webpage, what actions they are taking, how long they spend on your page, and with what content.  This is great for discovering strong and weak points of your site and can also help you identify hard-to-navigate areas that you can change.

Hot Jar even allows you to playback live screen recordings of user behaviour. These are called Session Recordings and are especially helpful if you want to understand how browsers really navigate your site. 

Session recordings let you see your website as your users see in their browser and record mouse movement, clicks, and scrolling in real-time.  This helps you gain a greater understanding into your site visitors, and can also help you identify weak spots and issues, so you can improve the user experience.

How do Heat Maps work?

Heat maps use a warm to cool colour spectrum to display your site analytics, highlighting the parts of your page that receive the most attention in red or orange. They can show you how far most people scroll down your page, allowing you to position your Call To Action where your visitors pay the most attention.

Heat Maps help you discover where to place your most important content, by showing you your pages hotspots.  They help you identify areas where browsers lose interest, or fail to navigate your website correctly, allowing you to adjust these areas so you get better results.

Heat Maps also show you which content sits above the “fold”.  This is the area of your website that people can easily see without having to scroll. It goes without saying that you should place your most important content here.

There are four main types of heat maps you can use to help understand your visitor data better:

Scroll Maps – These show you how far down your page readers are scrolling and what they do when they get there.  A great way to identify what is working on your page and what isn’t.

Click Maps- Also known as touch heat maps, these allow you to see the individual clicks users make.  Useful for highlighting problem areas, like where people are trying to navigate non-clickable elements, they also allow you to track custom parameters so you can see which of your campaigns are having most success.  HotJar allows you to take Click Maps one step further, with animated playable screen recordings, so you can see, in real time how your site visitors behave.

Move Maps – Move maps show where desktop users move and rest their mouse as they navigate your page. Hotspots highlighted in a move map show you where users are pausing their mouse.  Market research has found there is a link between  where people look and where their mouse is.  This makes Move Maps a great way to get an indication of what people are looking at on your website.

Desktop and mobile heat maps –  These allow you to compare the performance of your website across different devices.  Content that displays prominently on a desktop might well sit below the fold on a mobile device, and if so, user interaction and actions may differ.  These types of Heat Maps help you see if this is the case, so you can make the required changes to ensure both desktop and mobile browsers can easily interact and view your content. 

Three great ways you can use Heat Maps to boost your brand and drive conversions:

Content Marketing – You can use Scroll Maps to show you how far down the page users scroll, giving you a great insight into how much of your content they’re  reading. This is an ultra efficient technique you can use to assess the performance of blog posts, sales copy, and other content.  Max the effect by combining them with Click Maps, to track what content provides the most customer conversions.

Website Redesign – Heat Map technology can be really helpful when redesigning your site.  Run a map before and after your redesign, to compare your user stats and see if your new site performs better than the old one.

A/ B Testing – Heat Maps are invaluable for testing out different versions of your website or landing page, as they let you quickly see which one performs better.  With them,  you can see exactly what your visitors do differently on different versions of your pages.  You can use them to test out individual changes, like moving your Call To Action button, or you can test entirely different versions of your page to see which one converts more effectively.

If you’re interested in better understanding your audience through data and analytics, you should definitely incorporate Heat Map technology into your marketing approach. 

With so many useful insights they can give you a new perspective into your data, allowing you to tweak your site so it’s optimised for browsers and positioned to encourage conversions and sign ups.

Thanks for reading

In this article, we’ve taken extra special care to select and distill the key advice you need to grow your digital marketing.  We really hope you’ve enjoyed this primer to the fundamentals and that you’ll start implementing our tips in your day to day marketing efforts.

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